image unavailable Theresa El-Amin was recruited from a classroom at Tuskegee Institute in 1966 to join the movement for black political power. She worked in Lowndes County registering people to vote and poll watching in Jackson, MS for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. On her return to Atlanta in summer of 1966, she took a job at the phone company and became active in the Communications Workers of America (CWA). In 1986, she moved to Cleveland to work as a union organizer for SEIU for 12 years. Theresa founded the Southern Anti-Racism Network (SARN) in 1999. SARN has led initiatives for closing the education achievement gap by launching the organization Strong Parental Involvement in Community Education. SARN is credited with leading the coalition that passed an anti-sweatshop ordinance in the City of Durham to prevent the purchase of uniforms and textiles made in sweatshops. SARN is the main sponsoring organization for the Ella Baker Tour and Retreat.

Mukasa Willie Ricks was introduced to the civil rights movement in Chattanooga, TN in 1960. He worked with the NAACP and SCLC before becoming traveling campus organizer for SNCC in 1963. Mukasa has recruited and trained hundreds of students to participate in the civil rights movement. Mukasa has traveled throughout Africa and the US to call for an end to oppression against people of African descent. He currently lives in Atlanta where he mentors young activists and travels to speak to students in classrooms throughout the country.

Constancia “Dinky” Romilly was recruited by James Forman in 1963 to work on an oral history project for SNCC in Atlanta. In 1965, Dinky moved to NY where she and Jim Forman made a marriage commitment. In New York, she worked at the NY SNCC office and later for the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF). Her two sons were born in New York. In 1972, the family moved to Detroit where Dinky went to nursing school. She worked in emergency rooms at Bellevue in NYC and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. She retired from Bellevue in 2006 and now serves as president of the Friends of Jenin Theatre Company.

Mae Jackson is a native of New Orleans, LA. She moved to Brooklyn, NY in 1960. Mae became active in her early teens with the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) and SNCC. As a member of SNCC, she organized the Third World Women’s Alliance to deal with the rampant sexism found in the leadership of the civil rights movement. Mae is a poet whose first book of poetry was published by her friend and mentor, Nikki Giovanni. Mae works for health care justice with Healthcare Now. She founded Caring for Creators of Change to address issues of housing, health and economic conditions of aging political activists.

Ira Grupper was active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's: New York City rent strikes and school boycott; SNCC in Georgia; COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) and MFDP (Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party) in Mississippi; SCEF (Southern Conference Educational Fund) in Kentucky. In the 1970's Ira was among the first group of disabled complainants in the United States to win a handicap employment discrimination complaint under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the predecessor to the ADA, the Americans With Disabilities Act. He retired from the assembly-line job he won, in June 1999, with 24 years seniority. He was a union delegate to the Greater Louisville Central Labor Council, National Co-chair of NJA (New Jewish Agenda), Vice-Chair of the Louisville & Jefferson County (KY) Human Relations Commission. Ira has been to the Middle East four times, once for 6 months, based in Jerusalem, spending time in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Amman, Jordan. Currently he writes a monthly newspaper column, and is on the Exec. Board of the KY Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Sandra Adickes: Adickes was a New York high school English teacher and a volunteer teacher in a freedom school in Prince Edward County, Virginia in 1963, when Ivanhoe Donaldson recruited Norma Becker and herself to participate in Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964. Norma and Adickes recruited 40 other teachers, and came to teach in Mississippi after the school term ended. She taught high school students in Hattiesburg who were active in the Movement and came eagerly to Freedom School. The students were delighted to receive the new books that publishing company workers had contributed for their use, and years later, when she asked them what they remembered most about the summer, they all said, "the books." Those students became avid readers; most of them remained in Mississippi to "change the place," and, indeed, some of them became the community leaders who made the changes. Adickes became a college teacher and a writer, and adopted three daughters.

Matthew (Matt) Jones, former SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Field Secretary and former Director of the SNCC Freedom Singers was one of the leaders of the Nashville Student Movement while a student at Tennessee State University in 1960. He wrote his first Freedom Song in 1961 and in 1963 developed the Danville Freedom Voices to go into the tobacco fields of Virginia and sing Freedom Songs. In 1963 Matthew was sent to Atlanta by Jim Forman, SNCC Executive Director, to reorganize the SNCC Freedom Singers. He remained with them until 1967. He was arrested 29 times while in the movement and wrote many of his Freedom Songs while in jail.

Matt Jones, Freedom Fighter, Freedom Singer, prolific songwriter and composer of over 500 Freedom songs, including, "The Ballad of Medgar Evers", which can be heard in Rob Reiner's film, Ghosts of Mississippi and "Oginga Odinga", a Freedom Song about a Kenyan diplomat and Freedom Fighter who came to Atlanta in 1963 on a State Department tour in 1963.

On December 20 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X and The SNCC Freedom Singers appeared on a program at the Williams Institutional CME Church in Harlem in support of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The Freedom Singers performed a number of songs, including "Oginga Odinga". Malcolm seemed particularly moved by this song and said: I couldn't help but be very impressed at the outstart when the Freedom Singers were singing the song "Oginga Odinga" because Oginga is one of the foremost freedom fighters on the African continent… The complete speech can be found in Malcolm X Speaks. (Grove Press) After the church service, Malcolm took Ms. Hamer and the Freedom singers to the Audubon Ballroom to appear with him at the Organization of African Unity meeting.

In 1997, Matt composed, "As Above So Below", a tribute to Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz.

Matt's songs can also be found in the prize winning documentaries: The Black and the Green (1981), a film by St. Claire Bourne that chronicled the trip that Matt made to the North of Ireland under the direction of the late Rev. F.D. Kirkpatrick; PBS Special, Eyes On The Prize; BBC's Murder In Mississippi; Satellite Academy's prize winning video, The Road To Mississippi; Freedom On My Mind, which was nominated for a 1994 academy award.

Bob Zellner: In 1961, as a young college student in his home state of Alabama, Zellner was recruited to the civil rights movement by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After meeting King while doing research for a sociology paper on race relations, a 38-foot cross was burned on the lawn of his dormitory. Because he ignored the advice of his professors and met with King and other black civil rights leaders, Zellner and four other students were told to leave Huntingdon College in Montgomery as punishment for breaking the city's segregation laws. This rebuke pushed him to join the SNCC. He went on to become the first white Southerner field secretary. As a member of the group of predominantly black activists, Zellner was beaten, received death threats and investigated by the Alabama attorney general. After leaving SNCC when it became an all black organization in the mid-1960s, Zellner moved to New Orleans to form Grass Roots Organizing Work (WORK), a labor organization that spread across the South to bring working class white Southerners into coalition with blacks and convince all sides that this union could work. He left labor organizing in the early 1980s.was personally recruited to the freedom struggle by Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks while a student at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. After graduating in 1961, Bob became the first white southerner to serve as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). During the next six years, a volatile time in the Civil Rights Movement.

Guy and Candie Carawan are best known within the Movement for spreading and documenting the freedom songs. Guy served as music director at the Highlander Folk School throughout the 1960s. Trained as a musician and singer and familiar with the singing in the Labor Movement, he was able to teach songs which had served in peoples' struggles for justice. He introduced some important songs to the first Sit-In Students to gather at Highlander -- "I'm Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table," "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, Hold On," and "We Shall Overcome." He was invited by Ella Baker to teach these same songs at the founding meeting of SNCC in April of 1960. Later Guy would record singing in many Southern communities, publishing two books of freedom songs and six documentary
albums.

Candie came to Fisk University in Nashville in the Spring of 1960 where she was able to participate in the Nonviolent training workshops offered by Rev. James Lawson. She became an active participant in the Sit-Ins and met Guy at Highlander at the first gathering of movement students. She and Guy married in 1961 and she became his partner in both singing and documenting. The Carawans also organized many music workshops to encourage the spread of the freedom repertoire.

Guy and Candie have remained at Highlander and continue to meet with groups organizing for racial and economic justice, leading singing, learning new songs, and stressing the importance of cultural expression as part of struggle.

Muriel Tillinghast